The owner of a mechanical repair shop in Milwaukee, WI will serve a maximum seven years in prison for shooting a customer in the leg.

Anthony Wayne Smith is the owner of four companies, including Precision Custom Car Care and Unique Custom Car Care.

Surveillance video confirms Smith fired a single shot into a customer’s leg following a verbal altercation.

“I was aiming at the floor to scare the guy. I didn’t know he was shot until the next day when my lawyer called me because I locked the door. He was walking away, so I figured he was okay. He was leaving the building and the customers were safe. I didn’t know I shot him,” Smith said.

While Smith serves time, his wife, Allison, will run their four businesses.

A $50,000 grant would go a long way for the Collision Repair program at the Warren County Career Center in Lebanon, OH.

The Collision Repair Education Foundation offers a $50,000 Ultimate Collision Education Makeover Grant to “honor a school that has been doing an outstanding job in educating students in collision repair, but needs some financial assistance to improve their program’s teaching materials and equipment,” according to the foundation.

Items covered by the grant could include a resistance welder, air compressor as well as wrenches, screwdrivers and other tools.

A Michigan car dealership owner will turn over his business to new owners later this month, but there was something he had to do first.

As he transitions into retirement, Howard Cooper wanted to thank his employees, so he surprised them with ‘thank you’ checks. He gave all 89 employees $1,000 for every year they worked at the Howard Cooper Import Center in Ann Arbor, located on South State Street north of Eisenhower Parkway.

Cooper said he hopes “it makes a difference in their lives like they have made in mine.”

Cooper, 83, sold his dealership in April to Ohio-based Germain Motor Company. Details on the transaction haven’t been available.

The Ohio-based Choice Autobody Repair Association (CARA) has partnered with Collision Billing Services, a company designed to assist collision repairers in getting full payment from insurers on behalf of their customers.

“This seemed like the perfect fit for CARA,” said CARA President Rick Finney. “Given the restraints that are put on us as an association by anti-trust legislation, our partnership with CBS will allow us to accomplish our long-term goals in a short amount of time. The key is that CBS is not bound by the same restraints shop owners are.”

A Galesburg, IL, body shop owner recently installed an electric vehicle charging station that he says customers and local residents can use. The station is one way to go green, and also get more people into his shop.

Dave’s Auto Body owner Dave Dunn is offering service to anyone who needs to charge their vehicle, but especially to those who might need work done there, too. “Primarily, I see it as a marketing tool for Galesburg and also for our company, Dave’s Auto Body,” Dunn said.

Another need for the charging station is due to the Nissan Leaf in their rental fleet.

“It’s stunning,” Dunn said. “I had a lot of people who were pretty hesitant or skeptical here at Dave’s. Now, people are kind of fighting for it. ‘Hey, can I drive the electric car to go do this errand?’ It’s really fun to drive, and it’s quite luxurious, surprisingly.”

There are no other electric vehicle charging stations in the immediate area, which had local tourism officials expressing interest in Dave Dunn’s efforts, too.

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Russ Darrow KIA of Appleton, WI, announced that it has moved to a new location and renovated its facility, which includes an in-house, state-of-the-art collision repair shop.

The body shop will feature a heated downdraft paint booth, prep stations and use DuPont waterborne paint. It will be capable of repairing up to 10 vehicles at once, and “Signature Service” will feature free loaner cars, insurance claims service and a lifetime workmanship warranty.

The Automotive Service Association of Ohio (ASA-Ohio) hosted two meetings to discuss State Farm’s parts procurement pilot through PartsTrader. The meetings were led by Denise Caspersen, collision division manager for ASA National. Joe Sanfillipo, president of ASA-Ohio, and Ron Nagy, chairman of ASA National, were also present. The first meeting, sponsored by LKQ/Keystone, was held Sept. 18 in Cleveland. The second meeting, sponsored by Lindale Auto Parts, was held Sept. 19 in Cincinnati.

“A couple of months ago we hosted a very informative meeting about the State Farm PartsTrader pilot program and realized that an important piece of information was missing for our members—market share and complaint ratios of the various insurance companies here in Michigan,” stated Ray Fisher, President of ASA Michigan.

“As this new business model is being piloted, we knew that State Farm was the largest insurer in Michigan for auto insurance, but we could not inform our membership exactly by what volume nor did we know where the other carriers have placed, so we immediately worked with reports from the State of Michigan, Office of Finance and Insurance Regulations (OFIR) and created this very informative and well received webinar addressing those questions,” Fisher said.

In Ohio collision-repair facilities and vendors are represented by two associations: the Choice Autobody Repair Association and ASA-Ohio.

In 2005, CARA, a nonprofit collision repair association, was formed in Cadiz in eastern Ohio. CARA represents approximately 50 body shops in various cities throughout the state. Members include former members from the disbanded Ohio Collision Repair Association and the Ohio Bodyshop Owners Association.

“There were five shop owners who felt it was necessary to help educate consumers on their rights concerning collision repairs, which led to the formation of CARA,” says Rick Finney, president of the association and owner of Finney Automotive Inc. and Finney Tire LLC, both in Cadiz.